


The Girl On Fire

by odair4 (orphan_account)



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/M, POV Katniss Everdeen, everlark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3984241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/odair4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early on in her life, Katniss Everdeen discovers something about herself that sets her far apart from anyone else in the world. She is, quite literally, the Girl on Fire. Fits of rage were what once had sparked her to ignite. By now, she's learned to control what others often view as a gift. She, however, sees it as a curse. Something that conventionally might render someone automatically as a hero, she believes is what constitutes her as a villain. Hurting someone, a loved one or not, is what she fears as the inevitable, and that proves to be so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

“Cato! Cato! Cato!” Half of the kids on the kickball field chant.

The other half groan as the boy with spiky blond hair sprints around the bases, and make no effort to conceal their eye rolls at Peeta Mellark’s attempt to chase after the ball that Cato kicked all the way into the school’s parking lot.

Cato makes a show of jumping onto home plate with such force that his sneakers light up, and throws his arms in the air, revelling cockily in yet another home run. Glimmer blows a kiss in his direction from the sidelines.

Peeta Mellark hurries back and hurls the ball to Katniss Everdeen, the pitcher. As one of just two girls who had chosen to join the boys in their game of kickball, Katniss proves herself to be an equal competitor to them, if not better than most. She wipes her hands on her blue sundress and eyes Clove from the pitcher’s mound. 

“Any day now!” Clove taunts, and kicks up the dirt where she stands.

Katniss narrows her eyes and rolls the ball evenly along the field straight to Clove, who sends it flying right into Peeta’s face. He stumbles back and removes his hand from his cheek, revealing a bright red mark. Clove smirks in a satisfied manner, making her way to first base.

“Hey, that was on purpose!” Madge shouts from the side of the field. She’s known to make her affection for Peeta apparent, though it goes unreciprocated.

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” Peeta says, his discolored face claiming otherwise.

Katniss looks at Clove accusingly, but is impatient to get on with the game. The next boy up to kick is Marvel. The ball connects with his foot and lazily soars to a spot on the ground right before Katniss. She picks it up on one bounce and chases after Clove with it in her arms.

As Katniss reaches out to tag Clove with the rubber ball, Clove pushes her to the ground and keeps on running.

“What the heck, Clove?” Madge calls.

Katniss looks nothing short of enraged from where she’s landed on the dusty ground. 

Even as just a fourth grader, she’s known by teachers and classmates alike for her quiet intensity. Not many have ventured past the walls she’s built, so it’s a mystery what a spark of anger will set off in this loose cannon of a young girl.

Her face has become just as red as Peeta’s.

Actually, as her classmates begin to puzzledly realize, the entirety of her is a glowing shade of faint red.

She stands up and brushes off her arms. As she does so, tiny flickering sparks are shed from her arms. Everyone watches in disbelief, including Katniss. It’s as if she’s both the match and the matchbox, with strikes that glow but fail to ignite.


	2. The Debt

I’d let Madge pick out my outfit for tonight.

Cato’s throwing a huge party, and of course I’m invited. I’m his girlfriend. And of course, Madge, being the more popular and fashionable of the two of us, took one look inside my closet before deciding that nothing I own will suffice for tonight.

So I’ve borrowed some clothes from her. A pair of tiny jean shorts, so short that I can feel my butt peeking out of them, and an orange crop top. I can say with certainty that this is not something I’d pick out on my own.

“Come on, Katniss! You’ve got to use that body of yours to get Cato to like you, he’s not going to fall for your cold personality!” she’d teased me, egging me on to try on her clothes.

I thought I looked gangly and boyish in the outfit that was a little too big, but Madge assured me that I don’t just look great, I look hot, which is a compliment I’m apprehensive to accept. Although after she’s concealed some of my flaws with a bit of makeup and done my hair, I’m warming up to the notion.

“I’d like to have that shirt back with minimal burn damage,” she says, adjusting her belt.

I conjure a small flame from my index finger and then blow it out, smiling sarcastically at her.

Walking through the gate to Cato’s backyard, I see that he has transformed it into any party-loving teenager’s pilgrimmage destination. There are lanterns floating in the pool, coolers packed with beverages of varying potency, a hot tub on the deck, and club music pounding from a speaker system, which I find utterly irritable. Not to mention the horde of people scattered around getting drunk and scouting out who to hook up with next.

“There you are!” Cato calls out, parading down the stairs of the deck down to meet me. He’s holding a plastic cup in his hand that I don’t have to ask of its contents. His eyes look a little bloodshot at best. I wonder if Glimmer has people experimenting with her drug concoctions in the bathroom or something, Cato included.

What do I see in him? Absolutely nothing. There is nothing to see in him. Cato’s like a hollow shell of a person who’s programmed to manipulate and plague with his maniacal nature.

Of course, maybe I speak from a biased standpoint. After all, the majority of our little town seems to enjoy his company.

My tendency to catch on fire is this little town’s well-kept secret. But Cato uses that to his advantage in a way. He’s threatened a few times that if he doesn’t get what he wants out of me, he’ll contact someone to take me away.

I don’t know how serious I should take his claims. That kind of thing seems too cinematic to be a possibility, it’s difficult to imagine a world where I might not be accepted just because of this little thing that sets me apart. After years of knowledge of what I’m capable of, everyone regards it as normal. That doesn’t mean I’m necessarily well liked among everyone I go to school with, but I’m not shunned from society like you’d see in movies. Sometimes scenarios like that do creep their way into my nightmares, though. I figure that if I force myself to comply to Cato, it’ll all be over as soon as he moves onto whoever captures his attention next, and I can avoid any of those preposterous situations that there’s no way of telling how much truth there is to them.

“You look great,” Cato slurs. 

I want to gag at his words, but wrap my arms around his neck and smile right up at him.

Madge is dragged away by a guy I don’t recognize.

“See you later, Katniss!” she giggles, playfully resisting the boy’s hold on her arm for a second, “remember, we’ve got to be home by two!”

I wave halfheartedly as she heads off in the direction of the pool, stripping down into the bikini she wore under her clothes. I play with the tassel of my own hanging out of my shorts.

I feel really exposed now that Madge has left me alone with someone who has so much power over me.

Over these past few months with Cato, I feel as though I’ve lost every shred of innocence I’ve ever had.

“Come on, let’s go somewhere quiet for a while,” he shouts over the music.


	3. Drink to Forget

Cato puts his arm around my shoulder and I try to keep my composure, to remain calm enough not to broil his pasty white skin. 

For the first couple of years after discovering that I had this “ability,” I couldn’t control it very well. Any ounce of anger I felt would produce flames, varying in intensity depending on how mad I would be. I’d feel the heat start in my hands and creep up my arms. Only a few times had it ventured all throughout my body. Once was the day I’d found out my father had been killed on the job. I wouldn’t let my mother give me the details.

After accidentally singeing the hair off of the tail of my sister’s cat and having her give me the silent treatment for a week and a half as a result, my mother and I decided that some anger management sessions would most likely do me some good. It took a while for me to warm up to my therapist. As he’s a recovering alcoholic, I consider his credentials questionable, but Mr. Abernathy and I have formed a strange friendship. To me he’s like an uncle.

He’s really helped me learn to contain myself, so much so that I’m able to harness the fire I have within me and use it in moderation, in instances like lighting candles on birthday cakes and Madge’s cigarettes with my finger (regardless of my pleads for her to quit.) Madge was once the most innocent person I thought I could ever know, next to my little sister. About a year ago she started hanging around with Cato’s crowd and her veil of innocence disintegrated.

“Where are we going?” I ask Cato as he stumbles towards the house with me in his hold.

“I told you, someplace quiet. My room,” he reassures.

My insides fill up with dread at the thought. I’ve never felt so powerless next to someone as to Cato. He’s huge; one of those football players that spend nearly every waking moment at the gym. In comparison, he could probably snap me in half between two fingers if he wanted to. I’ll try not to give him a reason to want to.

He leads me up the stairs. Multiple other couples have found solace in his home as opposed to the wild backyard situation, as becomes evident as we’re forced to step over two people making out in the doorway of his bedroom.

Cato shuts the door, and I almost feel like passing out. 

“Are you having fun?” he asks.

“Madge and I just got here,” I tell him. Whenever I’m around him, I try to hide my emotions with great effort. The thought of opening up to him scares me.

“We should talk,” he says, laying on his back on top of his navy blue comforter.

“About what?” I keep my distance, leaning against his dresser.

“You’re my girl,” ew, I think “shouldn't we talk more often?"

"We usually skip the talking," I tell him bitterly. 

"Alright, if that's how you want to do this."

"What do you mean?"

"Come on over here," he says, patting the bed, and reaches over to turn off the only lamp illuminating the room.

Now it's he and I in the dark. My hand immediately goes to my pocket, but my phone's not there. I must have left it in Madge's car. 

I sit tentatively beside him on his bed. 

"I like your shirt."

"Madge let me borrow it for tonight."

Cato pulls it over my head and I feel tears emerge in my eyes, but I put on a courageous face like all of those times before. 

The alcohol on his breath is overwhelming and nauseating. 

"I'm not really in the mood for this now," I protest before he's able to get my bra undone. 

I clench my jaw. 

"Hang on a second," I say, and lean over to Cato's nightstand where he put his drink. 

I put it to my lips and drain it, I'd prefer to remember as little of this as possible.


	4. Rumors

Madge drives me home earlier than promised; at twelve. I sink into the backseat with a splitting headache and the inability to think too clearly. She drones on about Cato's college friend, Finnick, who took an interest in her tonight, and doesn't let me hear the end of how I didn't give her enough time to get his number. 

"He was the most beautiful man I've ever seen, he had perfectly golden hair and the most captivating green eyes…" 

I must fall asleep before hearing the end of it, because the next time I open my eyes, I'm staring at the ceiling fan in my bedroom. 

When the sun forces my consciousness alive again, I see that it's ten in the morning. My phone tells me that Cato's texted three times. 

"What are you doing today"

"Babe"

"Hello?"

Everytime he and I interact, I tell myself this can't go on much longer. Not that I'll be the one calling it off, but Cato can't possible maintain interest in me, especially when he's well known for hopping from girl to girl nearly each week. He and I have been together for a month and a half. I'm afraid to do anything wrong, and I'm afraid to do anything too right. 

"Can't see you today, I'm visiting my grandparents," I text back to him. 

It's a lie, but I'm in no shape to be hanging around anyone today. Looking in the mirror across from my bed, I'm a wreck. 

I stand up to make my way over to the bathroom for a shower, but it proves difficult to walk steadily. 

After showering, I feel ten times fresher, but still unwilling to do anything today besides lay in bed. My sister and mother go to church without me, I tell Prim to relay the message to our mom that I think I'm coming down with something. 

 

Walking into school on Monday, I feel a hand grab my backside, and know it's Cato. 

"Hey, where're you headed?" He asks. 

"Physics."

"You seem off today. Is there something bothering you?"

You, I long to say.

"No. I think I'm going to be late, I'll see you later," I tell him, and hurry off to my class. 

I get there three minutes early, and sit next to my old friend, Gale. 

"Are you alright? You look…tired," he tells me. 

"Thanks," I say with more than a hint of sarcasm. 

"I've heard rumors in the halls today-"

"About me?"

"You and Cato," Gale says his name with disgust in his tone, "Katniss, I've told you many times and I'll tell you again, I'm always around to kick his slimy ass."

And Gale has. In seventh grade, Gale and Cato had a brawl in the boys' locker room over something he’d never disclose the details of. 

"The rumors though, what are they about?" I press. 

Gale bites his lip. I've never seen him act so delicately around me. He’s always been direct, never one to beat around the bush

"Glimmer's saying Cato-" he lowers his voice to a whisper, "-got you pregnant. I heard two of the gym teachers mention it too."

"That's not true!" I shout, and Mr. Latier raises his glasses to glare at me inquisitively from his desk. 

"I know, I know," Gale assures.

The rest of the class files in before the bell rings, and Mr. Latier instructs us to get to work on our Newton’s laws packet in silence. 

Gale leans over and presses his pencil to my paper.

“Do you even like Cato?” he writes.

“He’s my boyfriend.” I write underneath his message.

Gale shakes his head, “that’s not what I asked.”

I erase our conversation from my packet, and we work independently for the remainder of the period.


End file.
